Daniel Ellsberg

In 1959, according to his internet biography, Daniel Ellsberg "became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Department of Defense and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making.

"He joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification on the front lines.

"On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, he worked on the Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Richard M. Nixon.

"Since the end of the Vietnam War he has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era and unlawful interventions."


 * Advisory Council, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

His wife is Patricia Ellsberg.

- Ellsberg is believed to be a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Also see Wikipedia: Daniel Ellsberg. -

Contact
URL: http://www.ellsberg.net/ (The Official Homepage of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers). -

Other SourceWatch Resources

 * Bush administration leaks
 * Bush administration scandals

Books

 * Daniel Ellsberg, Papers on the War, Simon & Schuster, 1972.

Other

 * Daniel Ellsberg, Leak Against This War. US And British Officials Must Expose Their Leaders' Lies About Iraq - As I Did Over Vietnam, Guardian/UK, January 27, 2004.